YOU WERE EATEN BY A GRUE - Audience Level: Advanced

Thinking about the practical applications of immutable data, almost certainly the least useful and most ridiculous thing would be a processor itself - or indeed - an entire virtual computer!

In this talk, you will discover an entirely immutable F# implementation of a virtual machine, Infocom's legendary 1979
Z-Machine. A stroke of brilliance in a fast emerging new computer game scene, the Z-Machine was one of the first successful commercial applications of a virtual machine and rightfully took a spot as one of the big landmarks of computer game history.

In today's even faster moving world of technology and languages, you can still learn a few lessons from this dusty, mostly forgotten relic. Modern computing lingo would perhaps call the Z-Machine a "domain specific computer"™. A similar concept is still used today in large game engines, though this style of computing is mostly unknown and unfamiliar. Perhaps inspiration can be drawn from such a paradigm? At any rate, the idea of an immutable computer is completely ridiculous - or is it?

The author categorically denies that any squirrels and / or type providers were harmed during the development of this software and / or talk.

Thanks to our sponsors

YOU WERE EATEN BY A GRUE - Audience Level: Advanced

Ross has been accidentally wiping hard drives and melting transistors into his fingers since he can remember. He has over 20 years programming experience in a wide variety of different languages and technologies, ranging from games and financial markets to fraud prevention and investigation. He has more recently been working on F# type providers. He loves squirrels, physics, electronics, robotics, functional programming, programming languages in general and squirrels.

Thinking about the practical applications of immutable data, almost certainly the least useful and most ridiculous thing would be a processor itself - or indeed - an entire virtual computer!

In this talk, you will discover an entirely immutable F# implementation of a virtual machine, Infocom's legendary 1979 Z-Machine. A stroke of brilliance in a fast emerging new computer game scene, the Z-Machine was one of the first successful commercial applications of a virtual machine and rightfully took a spot as one of the big landmarks of computer game history.

In today's even faster moving world of technology and languages, you can still learn a few lessons from this dusty, mostly forgotten relic. Modern computing lingo would perhaps call the Z-Machine a "domain specific computer"™. A similar concept is still used today in large game engines, though this style of computing is mostly unknown and unfamiliar. Perhaps inspiration can be drawn from such a paradigm? At any rate, the idea of an immutable computer is completely ridiculous - or is it?

The author categorically denies that any squirrels and / or type providers were harmed during the development of this software and / or talk.

Thanks to our sponsors

YOU WERE EATEN BY A GRUE - Audience Level: Advanced

Ross has been accidentally wiping hard drives and melting transistors into his fingers since he can remember. He has over 20 years programming experience in a wide variety of different languages and technologies, ranging from games and financial markets to fraud prevention and investigation. He has more recently been working on F# type providers. He loves squirrels, physics, electronics, robotics, functional programming, programming languages in general and squirrels.